Join our Team

Now seeking undergraduate and graduate students.

 
 
 
 

  • I am seeking undergraduate students at the University of Nebraska Omaha to join our research team beginning in January 2023.

    There may be opportunities for compensation through work-study programs. Please express your interest/need when submitting the form on the left or upon an interview/initial meeting with me. The same applies to various grants and scholarships for travel and living costs for international field research and/or conferences.

    Early undergraduates (1st and 2nd year) are especially encouraged to apply. More years at UNO will afford you more time to develop your skills and increase your contribution toward a given project.

  • If you would like to apply to UNO’s M.S. in Biology with me as your advisor, please fill out the form on the left for graduate students. After communicating with me, if I agree to recommend you for acceptance, you should plan to apply to the department in the spring semester to begin your study in the Fall of 2023.

    This program also carries opportunities for funding through TAships, work-study pay, and internal grants/fellowships. If I arrange a virtual or in-person meeting, you should be prepared to discuss this.

    While UNO’s Biology Department does not yet offer Ph.D.s, I am currently arranging opportunities to earn a Ph.D. in my lab through an affiliation with programs in Neuroscience/Psychology at UNO or other programs at UNMC and/or UNL. Feel free to fill out this graduate student form now, and I will update you with details as soon as they become available.

  • While I do not currently have funds available for a postdoctoral position, I am happy to discuss potential fellowships and serve as a mentor/recommender on those applications, pending a discussion of our shared vision and goals. Contact me via email for more information, or if you would like me to update you if/when I secure external funding for postdoctoral positions.

Lab members may develop or contribute to projects concentrating their work at just one of these three realms (North American zoos, the Itwara Primate Project, or the Rich Lab at UNO). Still, most of our main programs span two or more domains (e.g., field-based sample collection and analysis in the lab). Students interested in joining the Rich Lab do not have to commit to working in multiple domains. I am happy to work with them to design a project that allows them the flexibility to choose when and where they want to gain the most experience. I, however, require that all students be open to supporting every team member in some way and advancing our shared values of growth, authenticity, and inclusion in the Rich Lab and the Itwara Primate Project. Our work also requires every student to learn basic computational data analysis skills using languages like R, Python, and Pearl. I promise that you do not need to be an expert in computer programming to do this (or even have any experience), but you need to bring an openness to learning by trying. If you are already skilled in computer science, GIS, or other information technologies, please communicate this when using the form to contact me.

Lab Values

Healthy workplaces can only emerge from an active commitment to shared values and a willingness to make professional sacrifices for their sake.

  • While products such as publications, presentations, grants, and fellowships are important milestones toward our individual and communal success, we should never use them as end goals but instead as markers of our collective and personal growth. All of us, including the PI, can always learn and grow more as professionals and ethical members of society. In this lab, we support one another in that continuous endeavor.

  • Our lab does not tolerate false ideas, credit, motivations, or standards. We not only make space for one another to share our mistakes, concerns, and insecurities, but we reward this authenticity by helping one another correct or compensate for our unique challenges that might otherwise compromise the value of our work.

  • STEM fields have always marginalized and excluded some identities and communities from certain domains or levels. Our lab looks for concrete ways to welcome, include, and support people with diverse experiences and barriers, both for moral progress and the inevitable scientific advancement that greater human diversity will bring. Every lab member, including the PI, must be ready to self-reflect and readjust our behaviors or beliefs according to requests or responses from our team members or collaborators. While we should all expect to make missteps and mistakes, repeated signs of an unwillingness to improve or reports of poor representation of this value in the broader community are grounds for dismissal from this lab.